keep seeing ads for platforms that connect drone pilots with clients, dronebase or whatever they're called now, there seem to be a few of them. the concept sounds good in theory but i signed up for one a while back and mostly just got notifications for jobs that paid like 80 bucks and were an hour and a half drive away so i kind of gave up on it.

wondering if anyone has had a genuinely good experience with any of these or if the math just never really works out. maybe im in a bad area for it, im in the midwest, not sure if thats a factor. also curious if the insurance they sometimes offer through the platform is actually useful or if you need your own hull coverage regardless

yeah the pay on those platforms is pretty rough, the economics only really work if youre doing like volume and the job happens to be close to you. i got maybe three or four jobs off one of them over about six months that were actually worth it, rest were exactly what you described. the insurance thing varies by platform — some provide liability for the specific mission which is fine for a lot of commercial work but if you crash your bird youre on your own for the equipment so definitely dont assume its covering your mavic or whatever youre flying.

honestly the pilots i know who do okay with those platforms treat it as filler work between their actual clients, not the main income stream. building direct relationships with like a regional real estate photography company or a construction firm will always pay better than the marketplace cut.

i had decent luck with one of them early on, not gonna lie, mostly because it forced me to do jobs i wouldnt have sought out myself and i learned a lot. got pretty comfortable with data collection workflows from it. but yeah the per-job rate is not great and they take a chunk too. i eventually used the experience on my resume basically to get brought on part time with a survey company, so in that sense it was worth it even if i wasnt making much directly from the platform itself